PETER OBORNE: I know it's un-PC, but the ladies are letting Mrs May down

On the face of it, Theresa May should be the mistress of all she surveys. The Prime Minister is hugely popular in the polls. Her Tory Party is at its most dominant since Margaret Thatcher was leader.

The Opposition is at its weakest in living memory. Ukip is in utter chaos. Most importantly, Mrs May is showing firm, principled leadership as Britain heads towards Brexit.

But look a little deeper and it’s a different story. Some Conservative MPs are becoming mutinous and party discipline is slack.

At the risk of sounding politically incorrect, I am afraid that they have yet to make their mark. Home Secretary Amber Rudd hasn’t made an impact

In the Commons tea-room, plots are being hatched, and it is beginning to feel a bit like the unhappy final days of John Major’s government when it was riven by divisions on Europe and trailing in the polls to Tony Blair’s New Labour.

The truth is that Nature abhors a vacuum. In the absence of an effective opposition, restive Tory backbenchers are filling the void.

In recent weeks, they have seized several issues with which to challenge government ministers. This week, they scored a notable victory when they forced Chancellor Philip Hammond into a humiliating U-turn over his maladroit Budget decision to hit the self-employed with higher National Insurance payments.

Mr Hammond had little choice but to cave in. But his swift surrender sent out the unfortunate message that the Cabinet is prone to mistakes and can be easily knocked off-course. After this climbdown, backbenchers smelled blood.

RELATED ARTICLES

Share this article

Next, they mobilised over concerns that state schools in England will suffer a financial shortfall as a result of plans to change the national schools funding formula.

Core per-pupil funding would be cut, with more money given to schools on the basis of such factors as deprivation, poor prior attainment, special needs and having English as an additional language.

Although schools in urban areas are expected to be hardest hit, some in rural Tory heartlands also face severe cuts.

For my part, I believe these reforms are well thought-out and fairer, but it is true there will be schools that will lose out.

Steeled for a fight, a group of embittered Tory backbenchers (doubtless under pressure from angry parents in their constituencies) led by Geoffrey Clifton-Brown complained to Mrs May.

Justine Greening is performing as poorly as Education Secretary as she did previously at International Development. Andrea Leadsom (at the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs) is all but invisible

It’s surprising to see the veteran Cotswolds MP, who has had a long but relatively undistinguished parliamentary career, involved in such a revolt. But school standards are a key issue for Tories worried that too many schools in the shires are deprived of money.

The fact is that although MPs such as Mr Clifton-Brown are the ones challenging ministers, behind the scenes, backbenchers are being encouraged to rebel by Mrs May’s Remainer enemies such as George Osborne, who she sacked from the Government.

Even by Mr Osborne’s exceptionally low standard of recent behaviour, his plotting reeks of self-interest and hypocrisy. For, as Chancellor two years ago, he introduced the new national schools funding system as part of his annual spending review.

He promised to ‘phase out the arbitrary and unfair school funding formula that has systematically underfunded schools in whole swathes of the country’.

Suddenly, he has found it politically opportune to change his mind. This is petty revenge, pure and simple. The unedifying truth is that he and fellow Project Fear architect David Cameron are scheming to undermine both Mrs May and her Brexit strategy.

Indeed, Mr Cameron was spotted disloyally bad-mouthing Mr Hammond’s Budget when cameras caught him telling a Tory colleague the hike in National Insurance contributions for the self-employed ‘broke’ the party’s manifesto promise, adding: ‘How stupid can it get?’

Even a bitterly sore Edward Heath behaved better towards his successor Mrs Thatcher. This is morally shoddy behaviour, and Mrs May deserves better.

In the meantime, she has mammoth challenges ahead — none of which will be made easier by such disloyalty from senior Tory figures, especially if you add this to the incompetence that characterises many of her Cabinet colleagues.

For her part, Mrs May has risen in stature since entering Downing Street. Yet worryingly, too often, the Government looks like a one-woman band. Mrs May promoted a number of women to the Cabinet when she became Prime Minister, and was praised for doing so.

At the risk of sounding politically incorrect, I am afraid that they have yet to make their mark.

Home Secretary Amber Rudd hasn’t made an impact. Justine Greening is performing as poorly as Education Secretary as she did previously at International Development. Andrea Leadsom (at the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs) is all but invisible, while Priti Patel has yet to get to grips with flagrant waste of money in the overseas aid budget.

Some hugely gifted male politicians are wasted on the backbenches. Andrew Tyrie, chairman of the Treasury Committee, has the sharpest mind in the Commons and is a plausible replacement Chancellor if Mr Hammond goes on making mistakes.

Michael Gove was one of the most formidable ministers in the Cameron government and merits a recall. Jacob Rees-Mogg has tons of ability, is an ardent advocate of Brexit, and would be a powerful addition to the government front bench.

I regret to say Patrick McLoughlin has proved a sad disappointment as Tory chairman, as he showed this week with his inept response to the Electoral Commission fining the Tories £70,000 for over-spending on election campaign expenses.

BRANSON IS SHAMELESS TO SUE THE NHS

Sir Richard Branson is suing the NHS after one of his firms, Virgin Care, failed to win a contract to provide health visitors, school nurses and speech therapy to children in Surrey.

His decision is shameless. Despite saying he’s ‘hugely proud’ of the NHS, he must realise that his legal challenge will cost taxpayers a lot of money to defend and will take up valuable management time.

No doubt, in sunny tax exile on his private Caribbean island of Necker, it seems good business sense to fight for the interests of one part of his empire. But he should consider its effect on the public purse in a time of austerity. Virgin is a major player in the healthcare business, with more than 400 NHS contracts. But if Branson truly values his reputation — and the NHS — he should back off.

This threatens to turn into a major scandal. Twelve police forces are investigating a number of Tory MPs and there is a serious risk of criminal prosecutions.

It was utterly unacceptable for Mr McLoughlin to refuse to answer a TV reporter’s questions on the scandal and then push the camera toward the floor.

There is no sign that this deadbeat chairman understands the magnitude of the threat and that the integrity of the Tory Party — and, more widely, that of our whole political system — is at stake.

The consequence of these collective Cabinet failings is that Britain risks moving towards Brexit — one of the biggest challenges of our national history — with a government that is, at best, only partly functional.

Many of Mrs May’s problems stem from the fact that she has a parliamentary majority of 17 and was not elected Prime Minister in her own right (she owes her job to the votes of 199 Tory MPs).

Gordon Brown was in a similar position when he took over as PM from Mr Blair ten years ago — and it blighted his premiership.

True, the Tories are 19 per cent ahead of Labour in the opinion polls, but Mrs May badly needs her own mandate from the British people. In the light of the events of the past two weeks, the case for a General Election looks stronger by the day.

Understandably, there has been no wish to unsettle matters further at such a delicate time, but well-placed sources tell me that the mood within the Tory party command is changing.

The party machine is being put on a war footing in case Mrs May decides there should be a General Election. The candidates’ list is being spruced up. Regional officers are being hired.

Increasingly, Theresa May needs to reinforce her own authority —and only a General Election victory can achieve that properly.